Quinten Locke adjusted the awkward packages weighing down his arms as he stepped past the threshold of the store into the biting cold remnants of last night's winter storm. The automatic doors wooshed closed cutting him off from the warm currents of artificially heated air spewing from the overhead blowers. Finally, he was done! Finished with the anxiety-inducing Christmas shopping that left his bank account with mere pennies. He did it. With this last store, he now had everything he needed and all it took was everything he'd saved up for the entire year. In his arms, he carried an upgraded version of the laptop his brother had owned until it broke last month (obviously through unknown and mysterious means at no fault of Quinten's). Luckily the hard drive survived its trip down 8 stories, the express route. Quinten doubted he could ever make up for a loss of the hard drive. Nat kept all his engineering blueprints on it and would have lost two years of progress if it had been destroyed. Really it would have been his fault for not backing it up... Right? The new model Quinten just bought boasted a massive increase in processing power and memory with a full terabyte SSD. His brother will be so happy with the upgrade. And it was on sale! Totally makes up for it, he nodded at his internal musings. With a shiver, he crossed to the parking lot in search of his car. He always got turned around and he forgot where he parked so he was in for a bit of a search. 'Why does it have to be so packed?' "Damn holiday sales." He grumbled to himself as he walked up and down the aisles crowded with cars and chatting people coming to and fro. Finally, after five minutes he spotted his worn old Jeep two aisles over. "Right... I came in the other door" he mentally smacked his forehead as he cut through the rows of cars. Finally, he made it to the orange canvas top Wrangler. He loved that thing. He spent 3 years saving up for a car and when he finally had enough last year his best friend's dad sold it to him. Its name was Django and it's by far his greatest possession. He fumbled around his pockets looking for his keys. It wasn't easy with the box and bags cluttering his arms. Instead, he decided to just unzip the window and shove it all in the back before he froze to death. Finally, free of his burdens, he easily located his keys in his coat pocket, unlocked the door and hopped up to the seat. It took a bit for the cars to let him out of his spot, it just wasn't close enough to the doors for anyone to want his spot so most cars didn't bother. Finally, someone must have been looking for a while since they stopped far enough back and Quinten finally had his chance at freedom. Making sure he wasn't about to hit anyone, he finally made it out and was back on the road. Done for the night, he decided to just head home. He had no more money in his account so stopping to eat was a no go. He finally made it out of the city and it was open road for 20 miles before he got home to the little farm his grandparents left for him and his brother. His brother stayed in the city for easy access to his work so it ended up becoming his home. It was peaceful and quiet, exactly how he and his wife liked it. As he was carefully making his way down the desolate road home, he was surprised to feel a rumbling on the road. It felt like an earthquake, but the area he lived was normally pretty stable so it seemed weird to be getting one. It was small so after a bit of pondering he thought maybe it was just Django. The Jeep never showed signs of the Death Wobble before so it was a curious event. Less than a minute later another rumble hit, this time much larger than before, and Django lost traction and he started spinning out. It took a bit of coaxing, but he finally got the Jeep straightened out. He wasn't going fast due to the snow so it was fairly easy to get control again. When he got it right, he noticed a rift directly in front of him. It was like reality cracked. Thin edges of white surrounded a black abyss right in the middle of the road, and he was headed straight for it. He had no way to stop or swerve out of the way in time and passed right through. As his body slid past the swirling black barrier a frigid cold suffused his entire body, all the way to his bones and he passed out. He dreamed of floating in an expansive void. Streams of soft lights, neon colors, and whispering wordless tunes flowed past him in his endless eternal drift. --------- The presence of the goddess responsible for Quinten's current predicament enveloped the space in an omnipresent fashion. Using her powers, Demi infused Quinten with a hero's destiny then snapped, and he was sent off towards his new life.